The Northern Health Science Alliance highlights of 2024

NHSA leadership, board and membership

• Professor Louise Kenny CBE, Executive Pro Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool, and Hannah Davies, Deputy NHSA CEO, have taken over as Chair of the NHSA board and NHSA CEO following Professor David Burn stepping down in August after six years as chair and Dr Séamus O’Neill leaving in September after five years as CEO.
• Dr Louise Wood CBE, formerly Director of Science, Research & Evidence at the Department of Health and Social Care and Deputy CEO of the National Institute for Health and Care Research, was recruited to the board of directors as a non-exec director and Professor Mark Kearney, Executive Dean, Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Leeds, elected to the board as the University representative. Full details of our board of directors and team can be found on the NHSA website.
• The alliance was further strengthened with Teesside University and Alder Hey Children’s NHS Hospital Trust officially launching their memberships at the start of the year. Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, the country’s largest mental health trust, have also joined the alliance and we’re looking forward to a launch event and announcement of that in February.

 Institute for Preventative Health Research development

Our work continues apace on this. We’ve gained significant support and input on our work for an Institute for Preventative Health Research based in the North. Many of you know of, and have taken part in, our consultations and workshops around the institute. This has significant backing across the North from our members of 20 universities and NHS trusts, regional policymakers and stakeholders.

 Two weeks ago, five workshops were held with 65 attendees from 27 institutions participating. They will be written up and disseminated shortly. Please speak to your NHSA council representative to find out more – and watch this space for further developments.

Reports

We’ve had an impactful year producing reports supported by media and political campaigns which have influenced: government at all levels, the health research infrastructure, and society and policymakers in the North, nationally, and internationally. We’ve attached our NHSA Analysis of the UK Clinical Research Landscape report which has already had impact with Lord Darzi’s team and the Northern Mayors – but please also look at the NHSA and Health Equity North websites for other reports including the Woman of the North report, Infant Mortality, Long Covid and Children in Care reports - all new this year.

 Action and influencing

NHSA has had an impactful year in the policy world with five events at the Labour Party Conference, a roundtable at the Convention of the North and meetings with MPs, ministers and Metro Mayors across the North, who have provided support in parliament and in writing for our work:

• NHSA has submitted evidence to a number of select committees and our work has been mentioned in parliament in the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and at two Westminster Hall debates.
• NHSA also runs, through its Health Equity North institute, the Child of the North All-Party Parliamentary Group. Its Children in Care report was the main story on BBC Radio 4’s World at One with Health Secretary Wes Streeting quizzed on its findings - and huge media coverage elsewhere.
• Public Health Minister Andrew Gwynne pledged to support the Woman of the North report’s findings after Durham MP Mary Foy called a Westminster Hall debate on the report. Many MPs, civil servants, third sector organisations and NHSA authors attended the Woman of the North’s parliamentary launch with the Women’s Health Ambassador Dame Lesley Regan. Minister for Safeguarding and Violence against Women and Girls Jess Phillips attended the Woman of the North roundtable at Labour Party Conference together with Tracy Brabin and Kim McGuinness, the mayors of West Yorkshire and the North East.
• South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard and Manchester Metro Mayor Andy Burnham joined the Clinical Research Roundtable we held at the Convention of the North – launching the idea for the Institute for Preventative Health Research - and Oliver Coppard led the roundtable on the institute with NHSA members and representatives from the Tony Blair Institute, Health Foundation, Kings Fund, GMCA and others at Labour Party Conference.

Strengthening networks and bids across the North

Our networks across the North continued to develop and grow, linking together for collaborative work, funding bids, events and knowledge exchange. A new Child Health Network is coming together in 2025 at our members’ request and an NHS Workforce Challenges group has held its first meeting ahead of an exciting future programme.

 Here’s a snapshot of highlights:

• Nutrition North – a report on nutrition in the north compared to the rest of the country is being developed and will be published early in 2025.  Members of Nutrition North also successfully campaigned for the very first “Regional” Special Interest Group (SIG) with the Nutrition Society.  It was officially launched on the Nutrition Society website in December 2024.
• Healthy Ageing – as part of the network, the universities of Lancaster, Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle and Durham are producing a report on Unequal Ageing in the North, which is due to be launched in 2025.
• Data and AI – NHSA is currently working with the three northern NHS England Secure Data Environments (SDEs), plus Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) North, to support an exciting new funding submission that would see our members engage in the first project to assess feasibility of federated data analysis across the North, with a proposed child health / mental health focus.
• Head and Neck Cancer – Medical academics working through the network have had a paper submitted and accepted in Clinical Otolaryngology, on terminal laryngeal cancer, another paper is to be submitted in 2025 on inequalities in cancer across the North.
• Advanced Therapies – working in partnership with four of our university members (Newcastle, Teesside, Sheffield and Manchester) and external partners, we submitted a Connecting Capability Fund - Research England Development (CCF-RED) bid for £5m over three years to deliver ‘Connected Health North for Advanced Therapies Commercialisation’. If awarded, the project will cultivate the emerging ecosystem in the North of England to overcome the barriers to early-stage academic research, development and technology transfer of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs), increasing opportunities for successful spin-out and anchoring new companies in the North.
• Diagnostics and MedTech – following training and registering the NHSA as a licensed facilitating organisation for the NICE Medtech Early Technical Assessment (META) service, we completed our first contract with a digital health SME this year. NICE unexpectedly withdrew all licenses, to take the service back in-house. But we have developed this into a bespoke NHSA industry support offer that links with our international programme to generate high-value referrals into this network for collaborative R&D.  
• International – we brought Northern members to the HLTH Amsterdam conference with 80+ attendees at our Partner event, 3 MoUs under discussion with international partners, and Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust selected as a global innovation ambassador for HLTH 2025. We delivered the Israeli Innovation Authority (IIA) Health Tech Pilot and R&D programme, which saw seven NHS-Industry projects funded, valued at £3.5 Million, to develop and evaluate new health technologies.
• Mental Health – an exciting new research project is underway with NHSA members of the Mental Health Network. Watch this space for the new year.
• Knowledge Exchange Group – a new group, with a focus on collaborating across the North to achieve Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) metrics, will be holding a joint event with Innovate UK Business Growth and Innovate UK Business Connect.

• Health Equity North – was shortlisted for a BioNow Social Impact Award, in July its first summit was held and several written evidence submissions given to parliament. Publication and development of Woman of the North report, bringing together over 50 report authors, Child of the North Infant Mortality, Long Covid report and Child of the North APPG Children in Care report.

Media and Communications

We’ve had an exceptional year in hitting the national and regional media from news stories to deep-dives, radio to national TV. These are just a few of the organisations that have covered our reports, commentary, parliamentary work and more:

• Over 1,300 news stories in the media across the globe and over 700,000 impressions on social media.
• The lead story on BBC Radio 4's World at One programme following the launch of our Children in Care in the North of England report, a live interview on Kay Burley’s Sky News breakfast programme. Sky News package on the Children in Care report, featuring interviews with HEN academic co-director and case studies, featured throughout the day online and on TV news in the bulletins.
• Blanket coverage across the BBCs national and regional radio and TV programmes after offering exclusivity on the HEN, NIHR ARC GM and University of Manchester, Deaths of Despair research paper published in the Social Science and Medicine Journal. The lead online story on BBC News Online was viewed over a million times within a couple of hours of being published. The research secured around 200 media stories in total.
• The Woman of the North report launch was the focus of discussion on ITV’s This Morning, and secured high profile coverage on Channel 5 News, Daily Mirror, The Independent, Daily Express, i newspaper, The Times, The Big Issue, The Daily Mail, Daily Express, and many more.
• We have contributed comment pieces to The Guardian, The New Statesman, The QT, the Yorkshire Post, Resolve Poverty newsletter.

• We have had national coverage in print, broadcast and online media such as The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Financial Times, The Independent, Daily Mirror, The Daily Express, Sky News, Channel 5, ITV, Channel 4, BBC Politics Live, GB News, LBC, Times Radio, BBC radio interviews, BBC News Online and more. Numerous BBC Radio 5 Live interviews/bulletins focusing on HEN research.

• We have secured extensive coverage in regional media including the front page stories in The Yorkshire Post, The Northern Echo and The Newcastle Journal, as well as prominent pieces in the Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo, the Northern Agenda Podcast and over 50 local BBC radio/TV stations.

 The NHSA is a small but impactful organisation with a team of 12 members dedicated to building research and policy collaborations, advocating for and representing the North of England’s health science research system at a regional, national and international level.